Lopez Says He Helped Kill His Dad

KISSIMMEE — Miguel A. Lopez Jr. says he loved his father and wouldn't kill him. He does admit, however, that he helped someone else kill the prominent Orlando Hispanic leader.

''I'm not going to plead guilty to murder, but I'll plead guilty to conspiracy,'' Lopez, 19, said. ''I've never gotten violent with anybody. That's just not me.''

In two days of telephone interviews from a New Jersey jail, Lopez spoke of the killing, his flight to Colombia, return to the United States and capture after a crime spree up the East Coast.

The slaying occurred, he said, because his father, Miguel A. Lopez Sr., 49, planned to turn informant about laundering money for drug dealers. He only took part to protect the rest of his family from retribution, he said.

''Are you going to put your mother and sisters at risk for your father, who knows what the danger is?'' said Lopez, who would not identify the killer. ''My father got into this knowing what he was doing.''

Police in New Jersey and Florida declined to comment on the accusation. Last week, the Osceola County Sheriff's Office charged Lopez with first-degree murder in his father's death.

Friends of the elder Lopez, who was a tax consultant and past president of the Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce of Central Florida, consider the son's claims to be ludicrous.

''Based on the Miguel I knew, I wouldn't believe such a thing,'' said Orlando lawyer Carlos Marin-Rosa, who first met the elder Lopez in 1966 in law school at the University of Puerto Rico. ''He was always so upright in all things - he was a person of very serious character.''

Lopez Jr.'s former girlfriend, 17-year-old Miriam Reyes, discounted his past talk about organized crime and belonging to a gang.

''He's a really crazy kid. He likes to do weird things - say weird things - to get lots of attention,'' said Reyes, 17, who dated Lopez for two weeks this year while attending Dr. Phillips High School in Orlando. ''To me, it was all fantasy.''

Talk about visiting Colombia, however, may be true.

He made the trip, he said, from Aug. 29 to Sept. 5 while Osceola County sheriff's investigators searched for him after finding his father's charred body Aug. 26 beneath a burning railroad trestle near Kissimmee.

''Traveling. I'm not going to get into that,'' Lopez said of his reasons for visiting Bogota and Medellin.

His passport showed that he passed through customs from Colombia on Sept. 5 at Miami International Airport, said Detective Ray Lubina of the Ewing Township Police Department in New Jersey. Police confiscated the passport after arresting Lopez Sept. 12 outside Trenton.

Betty Marquez, Miguel Jr.'s mother, said the son she calls ''Miguelito'' always had a fascination with organized crime. Lopez and Marquez divorced in 1973.

Marquez worried, she said, that her ex-husband was making things too easy for their son and was trying to buy his affection after a 10-year separation. The worry began in July when Lopez Sr. bailed their son out of Orange County Jail, where he was being held on a federal burglary charge, she said.

''I felt it was better for him to stay in jail - that way he could learn a lesson,'' Marquez said.

Lopez pointed to his father's help in getting him out of trouble as reason why he wouldn't kill him.

After the slaying, Lopez said he fled Central Florida for Kentucky but returned to criss-cross the state at least twice. He decided to stay in Orlando the night he returned from Colombia after reading The Orlando Sentinel's story that day about his father's death.

He stayed in Orlando through Sept. 9, the day an acquaintance later told the Orange County Sheriff's Office that Lopez showed up at his home at 3 a.m. and stole a Marlin .30-.30-caliber rifle at gunpoint.

Lopez said the rifle was a gift, which he took along on a self-described crime spree up the East Coast.

Besides driving a car stolen from his father's fiancee, Dr. Alma I. Berrios of Orlando, Lopez said he stole gasoline from at least four gas stations along Interstate 95, tried to steal a Mercedes Benz and a Chevrolet Corvette, burglarized a supermarket, and planning to rob a 7-Eleven store before New Jersey police arrested him.

Arrested twice before for driving stolen luxury cars, Lopez said it only makes sense to take the better models.

''If you're going to steal a car, you might as well make it worth it. You're not going to get a difference (in jail terms) for stealing a Mercedes or a Yugo,'' Lopez said. ''So you might as well get one that's pretty fast and pretty comfortable.''

Lopez said the charges in New Jersey, including two counts of robbery, are his major concern for now. He expects to be sentenced to seven to nine years in prison in a plea bargain and serve two to three years, he said.

He is not sure what is going to happen with the murder charge in Florida, he said. But, whatever happens, he doubts he will lose his fascination with criminal organizations.

''Even when I get out of all this mess, I'm not going to change the way I am,'' he said. ''It's like it's in the blood, man. . . . Once it gets started, it's like an addiction. It's like total loyalty.''